Do not try this at home...

In today’s newsletter I will give tips on how to evaluate if building and maintaining automaton should be an internal project or it should be considered for outsourcing.

It is that time of year when construction crews are going around my neighborhood popping roofs open, putting on new dormers, additions and so on. Building is going on all over the place. Each summer when I see this happening, I have the urge to try something on my own. But in reality, most of us know that unless you have the right crew and tools, cracking open that roof by yourself could mean Christmas without a roof over your head. So ladies and gentlemen, here is your reason why most of us prefer an outsource model when it comes to a heavy duty jobs like roofing or building an addition to your home. It just makes sense for most of us.

Developing automation regression of the software product is as important as having that roof project completed before the holidays. Nevertheless, most every software development company cracking "that roof open" by themselves without the right crew and tools. We see the victims every day. For some reason it is not that obvious to consider outsourcing when it comes to building successful automation.

Please follow this link to let me know what you think.

I recently started analyzing why I never see any successful automation projects built by internal teams. Here is couple of things I came up with so far:

• No right expertise in place. Everyone thinks they are the expert! (Like every man is a handy-man at heart :-). )
• Not staying focused on automation only. You have to decide who you are: an expert in your product or in automation.
• No idea what is the right tool for a job ( Trying to use the frying pan to hammer the nails on the outside of the house, or buying $100,000 dollar performance tool to help you fix the memory leak.)

But if you think you or your company beat the odds and succeeded in fully regressing the daily build automatically, let me know.

So, for the rare ones, please follow this link to tell me the dirty details of successful implementation of automation that you know of.

For the rest of the world here is the list of questions you have to ask yourselves before deciding to build automation internally or to outsource it:

1. Have I ever seen a large automation suite (more that 50 hours for a single run) built and maintained by the internal team ever before?
2. Have I ever seen automation built by the internal team improve productivity of the development team over 600%?
3. Have I ever seen automation built by the internal team improve quality of the product over 25 times?
4. Do I have a year plus to check and see if a major investment in automation is going to pay off or would I rather have guaranteed results within 5-10 weeks?
5. The average time any automation expert stays in one company is 2 years. The average life span for a good automation suite is the life of the product, which is about 7+ years. Do I want to risk 2 years worth of investment walk away to a better paycheck?

So if you answered "NO" to more than 3 of the questions on this list, you should check the possibility of outsourcing this work to experts and focus on your core business.

Thinking About Finding A QA Automation Partner But Don’t Have The Foggiest Clue How To Decide? Follow this link to receive our FREE Checklist: 29 Critical Characteristics To Demand From Your QA Automation Partner...

As always, I wish you luck with your summer construction projects as well as success in building automation that works.

Vlad

Vlad Shamis
Founder and CEO, qaSignature

About qaSignature
At qaSignature we help Boston Software development organizations improve productivity and save money by building automation testing.

Don't get mad call Vlad: (857) 229-1060

E-mail us: vshamis@qasignature.com
Web: www.qasignature.com
Drop by for a cup of Russian samovar’s tea:
111 S. Bedford St.
Suite 100
Burlington, MA 01803

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